Journeys of the Shepherd

Chapter 16: Hunted

Mathilda Russell took a sip of mineral water, and glanced at the display of the digital clock on her desk. It was nine minutes past eleven.

It's late. She thought to herself. The resting period aboard the UFNV Servant had started about an hour ago, and most crew members were slumbering in their bunks. The Lieutenant Commander,  however, was still awake. Her current assignment was on her mind constantly, and she found it hard to sleep.

She got up from her chair, and walked over to a locker on the other side of her office. She typed in the security code, and opened the door. Her hand reached into the little compartment, and she pulled out a thick manila folder. As Russell returned to her desk, she read the warning text on the front of the folder.

RESTRICTED INFORMATION

ACCESS REQUIRES LEVEL 3 AUTHORIZATION 

This folder contains restricted information as defined by the Enhanced Security Act of 2362. Individuals accessing this folder and its contents without required authorization are subject to Federal law.

The Lieutenant Commander sat back down again, and opened up the folder as she rolled her chair to her desk. She pulled a stack of papers from the folder, and began to read. She delved through ship schematics, photographs of the planet's surface, and other additional data files. 

She pinched the back of her nose, and sighed. The crew of the Servant had been in orbit for five days now, but so far their mission had failed to locate the crash site. The only lead they had was the recovered corpse, but it was starting to look like it was another dead end. 

The mission's last hope was the surface imaging device, but Russell had little faith. The imager had surveyed a large portion of the supposed crash site, but the photographes showed nothing of interest. There was still a rather large area that needed to be surveyed, but the Lieutenant Commander doubted the efforts would turn up anything viable.

It was just six days ago when the Servant departed from the Federal planet Apollo. Russell remembered being called to headquarters at two o' clock in the morning, where she was briefed on her new assignment. The briefing lasted less than ten minutes, and she was ordered to have her ship ready by six o' clock. She had spent the next four hours gathering her crew, and making sure the Servant had enough fuel and supplies on board.

It had been a hectic morning, but the Lieutenant Commander and her crew were used to it. Whenever there was a ship in trouble, the Servant often was the first vessel on-scene, picking up any survivors and locating a possible crash site.

At the time, Russell thought this new task was just another search-and-rescue mission. But in the chaos of those early hours, she hadn't found the time to study the particulars of the mission. It was not until they were already en route, that she found out the true nature of the assignment. When she learned that the Space Shepherd went down along with a Union interceptor, and a possible load of stolen aethirium, she was struck with bewilderment. If the Union was involved, it made the situation a lot more complicated and dangerous.

Russell knew they were already on their way, a task force consisting of half a dozen ships had been detected by a radar station less than a day ago. A recent warning message she received stated the task force was rapidly moving to the Servant's position, it was estimated the Union ships would arrive in ten to twelve days. Their intentions were unclear, but it was certain the Union wouldn't take kindly to a Federal vessel snooping around the crash site of one of their vessels.

The Lieutenant Commander sighed a second time. Here she was, drifting above the surface of a deserted planet, ordered on a wild-goose chase while an enemy fleet was bearing down on her. Worst of all, her superiors were expecting her to lie to her crew.